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The Lack of Kalos Pokemon

Okay so as many of you may know, Kalos only gave us 69 new pokemon, and personally im not to crazy about it, to me it feels like gen 6 so far is really feeling like its the gen to get all the genwunners back, "oh look 2 mega charizards" and it feels like kalos is suffering for it.

Well, I had the same surprise. Kalos has only 69 pokémon and, for me, it's not a great numbers. The mega-evolutions are cool, but it's not an excuse for the low number of new pokémon... But Pokémon X and Y are complete now and it can't be changed.

Well, the pokémon of this region are interesting and some of them are strong. My final word for Kalos is: "Good, but it can be better".

What? I don't understand you guys and lads. When we have 150 pokémon, "how there are too much!", when we have less than 100, "What? Low number of pokémon, this is bad, bad!". And c'mon, you guys, if they've given to us other, non-popular pokémon, I doubt it'd be any good.

But sincerely, I loved the idea to have less pokémon. Really, almost all of Kalos pokémon are great. If not all. And the design style is better than before, as I think they had more time to work on them. They can continue like that if they want, I would love.

What? I don't understand you guys and lads. When we have 150 pokémon, "how there are too much!", when we have less than 100, "What? Low number of pokémon, this is bad, bad!". And c'mon, you guys, if they've given to us other, non-popular pokémon, I doubt it'd be any good.

But sincerely, I loved the idea to have less pokémon. Really, almost all of Kalos pokémon are great. If not all. And the design style is better than before, as I think they had more time to work on them. They can continue like that if they want, I would love.

I have to agree with Akanjao here. The Black and White series brought too many new pokemon and people were upset. Now the XY series brings less people are still upset. If they gave us too many pokemon they would have run out of ideas honestly. Does Vanillite, Kling Klang and Scrafty ring a bell. All three of these Pokemon look like little design went into them and before you dare say "Muk has a bad design too and so does Electrode!" Those are two pokemon in the kanto region. I can name you over 10 pokemon like Garbador, and Bibarel (Brought into DP) that were bad. I am just saying, the more pokemon, the less intelligent the design is going to be.

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The number I didn't have a problem with. It was enough to keep things reasonably fresh even though a dozen or so more may have been more ideal. The quality was good enough for me as well - there were enough for me to develop a reasonable team.

I think the type distribution was out of whack though, excluding Fairies (since of course they would show off the new type). Out of 69 Pokemon, there are nine Dragon types. Nine. That's five evolutionary lines. Despite it being the rarest type. Meanwhile, we only got one Bug line, one Water line that wasn't either version exclusive or a starter (and even then, one becomes a dragon) and four Normal lines of which only one was pure Normal. That isn't right.

I think that's why Kalos' Pokemon selection feels so small, even to me - the type diversity doesn't feel right. There's an overload of exotic types but the more common types are left out, so it feels devoid of filler, which in turn makes the number of Pokemon feel very small even if it isn't .

The quantity of new Pokemon follows the previous trend where even numbered generations have fewer new Pokemon but more evolutions for old Pokemon, except this time round they're called Mega evolutions, and functions more like formes than evolutions.

As for quantity and quality, I don't agree that having more Pokemon means that the overall quality must suffer. So yes, Black and White gave us 156 new Pokemon and you might dislike a couple of them. But that doesn't mean that the design on average becomes worse off, since each Pokemon concept is supposed to be viewed individually. Or at least that's how I look at them.
On the whole, there's easily more Pokemon that I like from BW compared to XY purely due to the sheer number to choose from. I don't even like many of XY's designs just because there's fewer of them.

Generally, I would think that most people prefer more Pokemon, if each and every single one of them fits their idea of 'good design'. Of course, that's never going to happen, so some people on hindsight wished that there were fewer Pokemon, or that those they didn't like never existed to begin with.

And honestly, I think some of you are confusing bad designs with simple designs. Grimer, Muk and Ditto are simple designs based off a very simple concept: slime. It's a cliche idea, but it works. As far as game characters are concerned, they look pretty standard to me, and any further additions to make them more 'complex' and 'creative' would have been uncalled for. Voltorb and Electrode are based on the simple motif of Pokeballs. Was it a bad idea to base a Pokemon off that? Maybe. But it still doesn't mean that simple = bad.

Last edited by Hidden Power; 19th January 2014 at 6:33 PM.

The best evolutionary designs are brought about by a balance between change and consistency.Artwork by Piper Thibodeau. You can view more of her work here.

At first i didnt liked the fact that there are so few pokemon.... i mean i knew we will have few because of the 150 we had in black but i was expecting 100.... anyway at the end i prefer this bunch than the unova one.... also GF has showed that things can change so its possible that pokemon z or x2 y2 might add a few more, a wild guess but may happen, its actually certain that they will add more megas in hoen remakes or the 3rd installment judging by the mega latias/latios

Tbh, Kanto (design wise) had the worst pokémons, by far. But who cares, they were sympathetic.
Unova's pokémon are far from being bad. People just hate it because it's fine/cool to hate new things and praise the old ones. I prefer Unova by a small amount over Kanto.

And I'm not saying less quantity = more quality. What I think, is that less quantity means they have a more free time to work on them. Something I don't see it happening when they need to create 150 pokémons or such.

I have to agree with Akanjao here. The Black and White series brought too many new pokemon and people were upset. Now the XY series brings less people are still upset. If they gave us too many pokemon they would have run out of ideas honestly. Does Vanillite, Kling Klang and Scrafty ring a bell. All three of these Pokemon look like little design went into them and before you dare say "Muk has a bad design too and so does Electrode!" Those are two pokemon in the kanto region. I can name you over 10 pokemon like Garbador, and Bibarel (Brought into DP) that were bad. I am just saying, the more pokemon, the less intelligent the design is going to be.

No they don't ring a bell, because last I checked neither of those were uncreative designs nor fit the whole "running out of ideas" shtick people keep throwing around. As for the second point, Hidden Power said it best, having more did not mean that the overall quality in Unova (or Kanto for that matter, which is the most beloved set of Pokémon) suffered nor that by having less Kalos was overall better, there were just more options in the former group then there were in the latter.

Anyway, I'll admit that I'm disappointed in the lower number because I like seeing the new Pokémon and what new ideas GF brings to the table, plus it's always fun for me to use those new Pokémon in a new playthrough in a new region and the limited number kind of hurt that (the aforementioned poor type distribution also didn't help). Having said that, I can understand why there weren't so many considering all of the models, updates, and other features that GF had to work with when making this game so I can't hold the low number against them that much.

I loved having a lot of new Pokémon every generation but before Gen VI, we had 649 Pokémon. With this number we don't need a ton of Pokémon every generation since new ideas can be saved for later generations without cramming them all into one. Kalos may have only brought 72 new Pokémon but a lot of them had new type combinations/extra stuff into them like Aegislash's Stance Change ability, Furfrou's trims, Meowstic and Pyroar's gender differences, Noibat & Noivern having Flying as the first primary type in a typing, Dragalge, etc.

That said, I like a lot of new Kalos Pokémon because of how fresh they feel to me with their quality. However I still prefer the Unova Pokémon because of all the cool concepts they made (Vanillite line being icicles + Ice cream, the Klink line's achievement of not showing a big difference as Klink evolves, and the homage they paid to Gen I which personally I thought they excelled at).

Originally Posted by Cresselia92

I think that Dragalge could suffer from "Goldeen Syndrome" and have problems outside of the water.

Well I was surprised with the low number. But honestly, there isn't a single Kalos pokemon I dislike, while there's usually several in each gen. Also, people always talk about genwunners, I've never actually seen one. Gamefreak wanted to appeal both new people and old fans and I think that worked. There are lots of people I know that stopped playing after gen 1 or 2, pretty much when the craze died down who saw the trailers from X and Y and bought the game. Partly because their old favorites got n forms, partly because it's the first gen that changed so much.

So yeah, in my opinion they're the best main pokemon games so far, doesn't matters that there's fewer new pokemon, their design makes up for it.

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The first three generations had a bad case of "WHY USE THIS WHEN THIS POKEMON EXISTS." Why would I want to run Onix when Rhydon and Golem, two pokemon with the same type and similar stats, exist and tend to be better with still having pretty cool designs? Why touch Mr. Mime when every other Psychic type is cooler and much better? Why even glance at Far'fetch'd when you could have Pidgeot, Fearow, or Dodrio? This would happen when you played Red and Blue back in the day, mass numbers meant certain pokemon would just fall behind over other options, or into obscurity with little to remember compared to cooler alternatives.

There are 69 new pokemon, but a lot of them are fun, interesting, and have cool stuff to play around with. Only about 2 or 3 could be argued that they bring nothing to the table. When you look at previous generations, like the burmy line suffering from having bland evolutions, or Mr. Mime being pointless and outclassed by everything from the start, or the baby pokemon that are cute but incredibly pointless.

Oh and the mega evolutions could be considered to an extent new Pokemon too. I mean Mega Mawile and Mega Pinsir may as well have been actual evolutions looking at how different they are in battle.

Who would win in a fight, Missingno or Diamond and Pearl's incredibly slow abomination of a game Engine?

Here is what I think: GAMEFREAK needs to think about things from a monetary perspective.
They are a business first and foremost, and you have to realise that they can't bring over 100 Pokémon to the table each time a Generation rolls over, simply because eventually, it will run out. It's a limited resource. By spreading it thinner, it's longevity is extended, at the cost of a few gameplay fun-factors such as these.

While I'm slightly dissapointed in the low number (which is semi-balanced due to Mega Evolutions bringing the number close to 100 anyway), I'm not dissapointed in the quality and difference between the Pokémon, because the Pokémon simply seem to be slightly more diverse than in Gen I or V, where you had like four things that literally did the same thing but with a different movepool.

What? I don't understand you guys and lads. When we have 150 pokémon, "how there are too much!", when we have less than 100, "What? Low number of pokémon, this is bad, bad!".

There's such thing as wanting a happy medium. :u

I'm not that bothered by the lack of Pokemon though. They seem to have gone out of their way to make each Kalos Pokemon unique and stand out and I'm happier with that than having a bunch of forgettable ones. BW introduced tons of Pokemon but a there were a couple that were pretty boring fillermon (like Gothitelle or those aliens). I would have liked to have seen a little more variety with types, though, considering there was only one new Poison line and one non-legendary Ground type.

Honestly, I would've been fine with the small number of Pokemon if they'd gone with more of a quality-over-quantity approach. That's probably what they aimed for, but honestly, if I had to sum up how I felt about most of the Pokemon designs, I'd have to say they're mostly "meh" for me. There are a few great ones in there, such as Sylveon, Aegislash, Meowstic, and Aurorus, but most of them just aren't terribly interesting to me. I still adored X and Y, because I felt that they were the most high-quality additions to the series gameplay-wise, but I would've preferred the small amount of Pokemon if there had been more effort put into their designs. That's just my opinion, though, and it honestly didn't detract from the experience of X and Y too much just because of the staggering number of usable Pokemon there are available in the main game.

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... we do not really need more than 100 new Pokémon every time that a new generation rolls around anymore. Looking at it prior to Gen VI, there were 649 perfectly usable Pokémon, with all manner of type combinations, stat spreads, movepool distributions, etc. So why oversaturate the pool of Pokémon when we have more than more than enough to choose from? If you ran a convenience store, and you had 70 loaves of bread in stock, and only needed to keep about 120 on hand, you would not order 150 more loaves - you would probably order about 50 or 60.

Plus, by introducing fewer Pokémon at a time, they can conserve other potential Pokémon concepts for use in later generations, and do not have to spill it all at once.

I admire the enthusiasm of those who wanted more than 72 new Pokémon, and I can understand their disappointment even if I do not share it, but Game Freak is, first and foremost, a business. They have to pay attention to these sorts of things. Hence, it is wise of them to try to find a balance between "economic and beneficial to the company" and "fan-pleasing and enjoyable."

Additionally more Pokémon = more models that they have to animate, and they already have to do multiple animations for well over 700 different variants of Pokémon.

Originally Posted by Lord Zoroark

Listen, you gotta remember these things; always avoid claims of Fennekin being (or becoming) part Fighting-type, don't tick off mods, and NEVER (and I mean NEVER!) suggest that Arceus is the God of Pokemon when Endolise is online. If you somehow make this mistake, run for the hills before he attempts to murder you via tongue lashing.

At first, I was a little disappointed by the low number of 6th gen. Pokemon, but now that I've played through X, I'm not bothered by it anymore. There's just so much variety now. I am always open to new Pokemon, but I think if we got 150 each time like we did in Gen. V, it would be overwhelming. The amount of new Pokemon each generation should be steady. And as said above, since we are working with 3D models now instead sprites, not introudcting too many Pokemon at once becomes even more important.

There's the move to the 3DS, which includes having to make actual 3D models for over 700 Pokémon, the sheer amount of content and playability in the game, Mega evolutions, etc. Plus, they're one of the only regions that includes Pokémon that are native to many different regions. Too many would be overwhelming.

... we do not really need more than 100 new Pokémon every time that a new generation rolls around anymore. Looking at it prior to Gen VI, there were 649 perfectly usable Pokémon, with all manner of type combinations, stat spreads, movepool distributions, etc. So why oversaturate the pool of Pokémon when we have more than more than enough to choose from? If you ran a convenience store, and you had 70 loaves of bread in stock, and only needed to keep about 120 on hand, you would not order 150 more loaves - you would probably order about 50 or 60.

Plus, by introducing fewer Pokémon at a time, they can conserve other potential Pokémon concepts for use in later generations, and do not have to spill it all at once.

I admire the enthusiasm of those who wanted more than 72 new Pokémon, and I can understand their disappointment even if I do not share it, but Game Freak is, first and foremost, a business. They have to pay attention to these sorts of things. Hence, it is wise of them to try to find a balance between "economic and beneficial to the company" and "fan-pleasing and enjoyable."

Additionally more Pokémon = more models that they have to animate, and they already have to do multiple animations for well over 700 different variants of Pokémon.

Perhaps you're thinking in terms of practical usage of each Pokemon, but that's only one point to consider. It's precisely the fact that Pokemon Company is a business that there's a need to recreate a functional ecosystem and keep each region fresh (whether it's new Pokemon or new evolutions), so that fans would actually want to buy their 'new' games despite every game reviewer harping on the point that they 'failed to break the mold'.

With abilities and move pools coming into play I feel that there's still a lot of room for permutation. One thing great about Gen VI is how Game Freak has demonstrated that retconing of old Pokemon abilities and stats isn't out of the question now, so with some fine-tuning nearly every Pokemon can be unique/useful. Even if there's some overlapping here and there, I don't think that it's a good reason to not come up with a new Pokemon. Charizard's outclassed by Ho-oh in every single stat barring a 10 point advantage in Speed (and there's no abilities back in Gen II), but I doubt anyone would mind the existence of both Pokemon. In fact, I think great artwork alone is more than sufficient to bring a Pokemon idea to life and drive its popularity among fans.

The best evolutionary designs are brought about by a balance between change and consistency.Artwork by Piper Thibodeau. You can view more of her work here.

OK, so we know that Ken Sugimori had artist's block when trying to design Xerneas, Yveltal and Zygarde, so he enlisted the help of his co-workers to complete the designs.

I'm sure that this principle applies to the others as well. Sugimori might have had artist's block with them and/or is running short of ideas. However, the problem is that the same Pokemon designs are recycled over and over again and new blood for Pokemon hasn't been considered. Like, we don't have a Pokemon based on the goose or even the peacock.

The lack of Pokémon itself didn't bother me much. What genuinely bothered me how the only cross-gen regular evolution was Sylveon the Eeveelution. I can't be the only person who thinks there are too many Eeveelutions now, right?

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